The Jim Cornette Experience

[Big Pete]

2 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

Cornette finished his review and ended up reviewing the All Out Main Event on this week's episode of the Experience.  I honestly can't blame him for not doing it last week.  I know advertising last week's episode as a review of All Out and then not reviewing the Main Event is a definite "bait and switch" but in his defense, the show was a lot longer than I think he expected it to be. I tried to watch that AEW PPV in one sitting as well, and I couldn't get through it all either.  I don't know who the genius is that decided "big" Pro Wrestling shows in 2019 needed to be 4 + hours long, but whoever it was needs a smack in the teeth.  All Out was living proof of that.  You're not going to find a more rabid fan base than AEW fans, but judging by the crowd noise, even they were burned out by the time the Main Event rolled around.

Cornette reviews NXT UK Takeover: Cardiff during this week's Experience.  I was really surprised at how much he liked WALTER vs. Tyler Bate.  I personally loved that match and have it as my current MOTY, where it bumped off Cody vs. Dustin - but I was caught off guard by how much Cornette and Last liked it as well.  The one good thing about Cornette's review of the NXT UK show is that he's never met anybody on the roster, and he doesn't have heat with anybody there, so he went into the review with an open mind - or as much of an open mind as you're likely to get from Jim Cornette.

I suppose it's a personal bug-bear. For me if you're going to be hyper-critical of a product, the least you can do is make sure your review is on point. Skipping through segments, missing key matches and just leaning heavily on pre-existing criticisms. Again, normally I like Jim but this wasn't one of his better episodes.

Also I'm not sure if Jim should be dishing out about run-times given the state of his podcast. You could skip through an hour of his podcast and all you'd be missing is his plugs, his latest twitter beef, some political news story and possibly a wrestling news item that everybody and their doghas already weighed in.

[The Thread Killer]

12 hours ago, Big Pete said:

You could skip through an hour of his podcast and all you'd be missing is his plugs, his latest twitter beef, some political news story and possibly a wrestling news item that everybody and their doghas already weighed in.

I don't disagree with you there.  I don't even listen to The Jim Cornette Experience every week.  If the main topic is something that interests me then I'll check it out, but otherwise I can live without listening to Jim talk about shaving his nether regions and ranting about Trump and Republicans.  I never miss Corny's Drive-Thru though, that's probably my favorite podcast.

[El-P]

11 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

Face it dude, you just don't like Cornette because he craps all over AEW and in doing so, is verbalizing the opinions of a select group of Pro Wrestling fans who don't like that style.

I mostly love Cornette. Always have. Was all over his stuff (podcast & great shoots with KC) a few years ago when everyone was shitting on him going back on his ROH days and unpopular political opinions. I find his views on modern wrestling to be mostly irrelevant because they are ridiculously biased.

11 hours ago, The Thread Killer said:

He's pretty much the voice of the resistance when it comes to a certain segment of Pro Wrestling fandom that doesn't care for the so called "evolution" of the sport, and are being vocal about it.

Sorry, but this is LOL material. The "Voice of resistance" ? Because we sure need "resistance" toward actually making pro-wrestling better for all parties involved, which is what the emergence of AEW is doing. Corny is doing podcast business. His "feud" with Sami Callihan was a work. He cornered himself against a wall with some of his ridiculous takes on the Bucks and Kenny Omega. He's basically working his "old man yells at cloud" gimmick to wonders to a bunch of his fanboys who blindly eat his shit up, just like some fanboys blindly eat Brucie's shit up. Trying to paint AEW and basically all modern pro-wrestling as some kind of "threat" to whatever pro-wrestling would supposed to be in 2019 by "good standarts" and something that needs to be "resisted" is completely ridiculous.

[The Thread Killer]

4 hours ago, El-P said:

Sorry, but this is LOL material. The "Voice of resistance" ? Because we sure need "resistance" toward actually making pro-wrestling better for all parties involved, which is what the emergence of AEW is doing...Trying to paint AEW and basically all modern pro-wrestling as some kind of "threat" to whatever pro-wrestling would supposed to be in 2019 by "good standarts" and something that needs to be "resisted" is completely ridiculous.

Whether you want to admit this or not, there are a lot of fans out there of traditional Pro Wrestling who don't like AEW and don't like the direction so-called "modern" Pro Wrestling is taking. That's a fact, even if you can't accept it.  David Bixenspan wrote an article about it last month when AEW signed Orange Cassidy.  I'm not saying it's right, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying it's a fact.

You love AEW. You want AEW to succeed. You think AEW is making Pro Wrestling better. You've made that point. And that's fine, more power to you.  But if you can't admit that there is a segment of fandom that doesn't like the whole comedy/performance art aspect of AEW, and if you can't see that Cornette has pretty much ended up becoming the spokesman for those types of fans, then you are the one who is being completely ridiculous. 

[El-P]

17 minutes ago, The Thread Killer said:

Whether you want to admit this or not, there are a lot of fans out there of traditional Pro Wrestling who don't like AEW and don't like the direction so-called "modern" Pro Wrestling is taking. That's a fact, even if you can't accept it. 

Tough shit. Because pro-wrestling has always been evolving.

17 minutes ago, The Thread Killer said:

You love AEW. You want AEW to succeed. You think AEW is making Pro Wrestling better. You've made that point. And that's fine, more power to you.  But if you can't admit that there is a segment of fandom that doesn't like the whole comedy/performance art aspect of AEW, and if you can't see that Cornette has pretty much ended up becoming the spokesman for those types of fans, then you are the one who is being completely ridiculous. 

I don't care about a segment of fans who doesn't like this or doesn't like that. I always care about one thing : what I enjoy myself. Pretty much no one watched Lucha Underground after the first season, sadly. It's still my favourite promotion of the last 5 years (and the one who made me evolved and get with the times too). Actually at this point, IMPACT is my favourite promotion, not AEW, because there's no TV yet.

AEW is definitely makin pro-wrestling better for everyone, that is a fact, because workers have never had this kind of leverage in the last 20 years, and fans have never had more choices either. So, those are facts, not opinions.

As far as Corny being the spokesperson, he's a pretty shitty one considering how much biased he is. He still talks about Kenny Omega like "that guy who ruined pro-wrestling because he wrestled a 7 year old girl" and not the guy who was a huge star in NJPW, sold out huge arenas against Okada and is considered by many of one of the greatest worker of all time already. He still talks about the Bucks like they are indie geeks and not legit stars, which at this point is factually wrong. I could go on and on. His "feud" with Callihan was bullshit, he admitted it himself. Corny ain't the spokesperson for no one, he's making good business selling soup to people. And really, the people who don't like what AEW is doing, guess what : dont watch. You're not the right target. They don't need a "spokeperson" nor a "voice of resistance" (seriously). Like I said, pro-wrestling is evolving. Tough shit. But who knows, maybe AEW will end up tanking and those Corny guys will be happy that they were "proven right" and then they can go back bitching about how boring WWE is...

(and really, if I had my ways, I'd glady get another strong season of Lucha Underground that no one would give a fuck about but me)

[The Thread Killer]

23 minutes ago, El-P said:

AEW is definitely makin pro-wrestling better for everyone, that is a fact, because workers have never had this kind of leverage in the last 20 years, and fans have never had more choices either. So, those are facts, not opinions.

There is no point trying to discuss this with you any further, because you're either unable or unwilling to differentiate between your opinion about something and what constitutes a fact.

That's a fact, by the way.

[El-P]

1 hour ago, The Thread Killer said:

There is no point trying to discuss this with you any further, because you're either unable or unwilling to differentiate between your opinion about something and what constitutes a fact.

You mean there has been point in the last 20 years where the context was better for workers and fans in term of career and choice of what to watch ?

You mean Kenny Omega hasn't been a huge star in Japan and did not sell out big arenas working as a main event act with Okada, in matches that have gotten both incredible reviews and emotional response (and by that I mean, from the actual japanese audience who actually paid to see those guys) ?

You mean the Young Bucks are still actually indie geeks and have not actually made a name for themselves to the point of them getting their own company which has sold out a bunch of shows without any TV ?

What have I referred to as facts that aren't facts ? My opinions are what they are, but the fact is, Corny has a huge confirmation bias issue whenever he talks about AEW (for instance it's laughable he bashes Excalibur while praising JR, who could not even get Jungle Boy's name right to begin with).

And for the record, I still enjoy Corny a lot (great color guy still, much better than 99% of the guys today). That doesn't mean I have to agree about everything with him. And if I'm not mistaken, that's also true with you...

[Big Pete]

On 9/14/2019 at 5:27 AM, The Thread Killer said:

There is no point trying to discuss this with you any further, because you're either unable or unwilling to differentiate between your opinion about something and what constitutes a fact.

That's a fact, by the way.

From my experience, the wrestling podcast boom has had an impact on the way fans critique a match. Wider groups of fans have now become concious of high-spots and near-falls and have become more and more critical when those spots are thrown away flippantly. These criticisms certainly existed, but the way they're universally regarded and the conversations around them have been shaped by the past wrestlers since they're credible sources and know how to articulate their issues.

In saying that, it's disappointing when these dominant voices with their widepsread influence undermine their credibility with these silly agendas. Cornette hates the Young Bucks because they slagged him since he'd only bring in Bennett and Maria from the west coast. Cornette hates Omega because he pulled out of their biggest show of the year close to the date of the show causing him to scramble to find a replacement only to find out Omega worked a match in Japan a few days later. Cornette doesn't allow all negative experiences to shape his view on wrestlers (eg. HBK) but he was a contemporary whereas these other wrestlers are a different generation, so of course he isn't going to give them a chance.

Jim doesn't have to like them either to be right, but when he makes a point that he skipped through the match or starts up a Kenny Olivier rant you know it's coming from a bad place. Not only does it warp a section of the community, but it also just undermines his own.

[TheDuke]

4 hours ago, Big Pete said:

Cornette hates the Young Bucks because they slagged him since he'd only bring in Bennett and Maria from the west coast. Cornette hates Omega because he pulled out of their biggest show of the year close to the date of the show causing him to scramble to find a replacement only to find out Omega worked a match in Japan a few days later.

Thank you. I didn't know about this. This helps to clarify a lot when listening to his podcasts. Did a similar incident to these happen with Joey Janella? Because he seems to go off on him a lot too.

[Big Pete]

6 hours ago, TheDuke said:

Thank you. I didn't know about this. This helps to clarify a lot when listening to his podcasts. Did a similar incident to these happen with Joey Janella? Because he seems to go off on him a lot too.

Not that I'm aware of, I believe Cornette saw a clip of one of his stunts and Janela keeps poking the bear. Cornette has always been anti-hardcore and it was one of the few aspects he openly criticised about MLW.

For the record, the show Omega skipped was Final Battle 2010 where he was set to face off against Eddie Edwards. The show was on the 18th of December and Kenny would go onto work on Boxing Day in a 20+ minute tag team match with Kota Ibushi.

The strange thing about the Bucks is that if you go back and watch those early Sinclair Broadcasts, they're actually booked pretty well and showcased. Something happened in early 2012, and the relationship between the two parties went sour. The Bucks started losing all the time and they (along with Tyler Perkins) stopped appearing altogether.

This strained Cornette's relationship with Steen who was close friends with the Buck and he began to vocalise his issues with Cornette. There was a 2012 shoot interview with Steen and Richards where they sat down and cleared the air over some issue they had during their 2012 program. They both blamed Cornette for being out of touch and trying to turn their rivalry into a USA vs. Canada feud and make Davey into a white meat babyface. Cornette heard about it and it escalated from there.

 

 

[Happ Hazzard]

On 9/13/2019 at 9:13 PM, El-P said:

You mean there has been point in the last 20 years where the context was better for workers and fans in term of career and choice of what to watch ?

The context for workers isn't going to be good for long if AEW keep doing the things they have been doing. The whole "wrestling as a performance art" schtick is going to absolutely die a death when it's put in front of the average Joe Sixpack watching TBS. People will see something like "the librarians" click the channel over and not come back... ever.

[BruiserBrody]

https://twitter.com/ian_stewart7/status/1176651245676896256

[sek69]

On 9/16/2019 at 7:46 AM, Big Pete said:

Not that I'm aware of, I believe Cornette saw a clip of one of his stunts and Janela keeps poking the bear. Cornette has always been anti-hardcore and it was one of the few aspects he openly criticised about MLW.

For the record, the show Omega skipped was Final Battle 2010 where he was set to face off against Eddie Edwards. The show was on the 18th of December and Kenny would go onto work on Boxing Day in a 20+ minute tag team match with Kota Ibushi.

The strange thing about the Bucks is that if you go back and watch those early Sinclair Broadcasts, they're actually booked pretty well and showcased. Something happened in early 2012, and the relationship between the two parties went sour. The Bucks started losing all the time and they (along with Tyler Perkins) stopped appearing altogether.

This strained Cornette's relationship with Steen who was close friends with the Buck and he began to vocalise his issues with Cornette. There was a 2012 shoot interview with Steen and Richards where they sat down and cleared the air over some issue they had during their 2012 program. They both blamed Cornette for being out of touch and trying to turn their rivalry into a USA vs. Canada feud and make Davey into a white meat babyface. Cornette heard about it and it escalated from there.

 

 

 

Not to mention the Bucks basically blew up Corny's spot when they revealed he approached them to work a program during their "beef" saying it would be the only program people would believe. Ever since then I've viewed all of his rants against modern wrestlers through the prism of a guy trying to shoot his own angle. 

[WrestlingPower]

I'm curious to hear Cornette on the NWA shows as they are pushing Cabana and I heard there was a jobber on there in basically street clothes.  I fully get that Cornette would have to be professional and do the job he was hired for but I'll be interested to see how he toes that line without coming off as a hypocrite.  He's kind of painted himself into a corner on some of this type of stuff where he'll either have to recuse himself on commentary from certain matches, or "go into business for himself" in creating a diversion that wouldn't serve the promotion any if he goes off on some of his biases on commentary.

 

I'm totally in agreement with Cornette though on his criticisms of Omega.  The preening, jazz hands, and exaggerated expressions do totally distract me from his "performance" in a match.  Unless AEW really start pushing him soon (and I'm not advocating for that), I think Omega is kind of being exposed as not as big a deal as he's been presented in recent years.  He's not in the main event scene yet and it's not like he's come across in a way that it's some crime against humanity that he's being "held down" in the booking.  He seems perfectly fine in the upper mid-card where he probably belongs.

[CarpetCrawler]

One thing I've noticed from getting a little back into listening to soundbites from Jim's podcasts on YouTube is that he's a lot more open with taking shots at Bruce Prichard than he used to be.  I'm guessing they never exactly made up from whatever caused them to not be on speaking terms with each other about a year ago.  Even back then though Cornette wouldn't be too mean about Bruce, but now he's taking real subtle shots at him.

[BruiserBrody]

3 hours ago, CarpetCrawler said:

One thing I've noticed from getting a little back into listening to soundbites from Jim's podcasts on YouTube is that he's a lot more open with taking shots at Bruce Prichard than he used to be.  I'm guessing they never exactly made up from whatever caused them to not be on speaking terms with each other about a year ago.  Even back then though Cornette wouldn't be too mean about Bruce, but now he's taking real subtle shots at him.

Corny is now no longer just passive on Meltz'' love of flippy wrestling, and is openly shitting on Dave harder than ever.  

[SomethingSavage]

It's not the Experience, but I've actually gone back and started to listen to all the Drive-Thru episodes from the very beginning. This show is just an absolute blast, and it's the one I'd highly recommend to any wrestling fan.

I forgot just how much of a home run the Drive-Thru was from day one. It's a stripping away of the more annoying aspects from the Experience, and it's essentially just Jim telling fun stories and reminiscing on the things he loves most about professional wrestling.

I'm about ten episodes in right now, and so much ground has already been covered. OVW, Smoky Mountain, and (naturally) the 80s territories are all highlighted in rapid succession on these shows.

Cornette's comparisons of Funk, Lawler, and Flair in debating the merits of each as his own personal Greatest Wrestler Ever is some PWO GWE level shit if I ever heard it. Well worth seeking out for you list guys. Corny has a level-headed, realist type response to summarize his thoughts, which I appreciated.

I understand Brian Last has some detractors and everything, but I've really come around on the guy, especially when paired with Corny. The criticisms about Conrad Thompson not following up on questions or bending and adjusting with the flow of the conversation are not things that apply to Last.

Say what you will about Brian, but the guy allows the talk to steer itself and find its own path at times. One listener question about ring announcers literally transforms into a lengthy discussion involving fashion choices, Jim's managerial wardrobe becoming more gawky and outrageous, how uncomfortable some of those suits were, and then settles with Last inquiring about Jim's personal favorite choice. That's the difference in having a co-host that is simply hitting the beats and one who is trying to create some rhythm.

If you dig what Arn is doing right now, there's no reason to believe you wouldn't feel similarly about Cornette's Drive-Thru. You can even start from the very beginning like I've recently done. I don't think you'd be disappointed.

[Mad Dog]

My only problem with the Drive Thru is it gets super redundant after about 20 episodes.

[Big Pete]

Jim has dropped his NXT reviews. He didn't hate the show, he just found himself bored and kept making the same points over and over again. Everything that involved the Undisputed Era was great, he liked some of the other acts like Keith Lee. Otherwise the show didn't do a lot for him.

So he's turned his attention to Raw and spoilers he hates it. The show doesn't make him appreciate AEW more, rather it makes him want to quit reviewing modern wrestling altogether but the show is everything he hates about modern wrestling. Too contrived, too slow, nobody is getting themselves over like stars and nothing seems to be happening in general. What really set Jim off is Seth Rollins. Cornette has been an advocate of Rollins since they worked together in ROH but he hates the Monday Night Messiah gimmick and thinks they've just paired him up with a bunch of job guys. He specifically hated the name Murphy and believes Vince is just trying to bury him with that name.

He couldn't believe fans were into the Kabuki Warriors and wondered how woke Twitter wasn't pulling that apart given how racist and stereotypical the gimmick was coming off.

I think his most interesting observation involved Ivar and how he should be booked like Bam Bam Bigelow and allowed to go on a tear. He was a huge fan and wanted them to drop the Viking Raiders gimmick pronto. I don't think I've ever heard a past legend ever really pull for Ivar/Hansen before but I can see his point and agree he'd be a much better star than Erick Rowan.

[flyonthewall2983]

 

[BruiserBrody]

I love his shoots/podcasts, but it's maddening that Brian and Corny are reviewing AEW and BOTH miss the main event for different reasons this week.  THEY BOTH HAVE DVR's.  

I'm torn on the shows being 2 and a half hours now. 

[TheDuke]

I liked the Mike Mills segment, because I like anytime Corny talks about old wrestling. I wish he was reviewing old wrestling on the Network instead of stuff like Legends House or the documentaries.

[The Thread Killer]

3 hours ago, TheDuke said:

I liked the Mike Mills segment, because I like anytime Corny talks about old wrestling. I wish he was reviewing old wrestling on the Network instead of stuff like Legends House or the documentaries.

I couldn't agree with you more. That Mike Mills segment was the kind of thing that shows Cornette at his best and highlighted why I listen to his podcasts to begin with.  I couldn't care less what Jim Cornette thinks of Legend's House, for fuck's sake.  Conversely, that little history he gave of the Texas wrestling territories on the Drive-Thru last week was very interesting, informative and entertaining, in my opinion. But I'm afraid that type of content is becoming less featured on Cornette's show. 

After Cornette signed up for the WWE Network. Brian Last posted a poll on Twitter, giving fans a choice of what content they wanted Cornette to review first. There were some decent choices in the poll, but Legend's House actually won the poll.  I was actually really surprised at first but I guess this just proves something I have suspected for a while now.  Cornette is playing to his Twitter fans more and more now. Cornette's newer fans don't want to hear about classic Pro Wrestling history at all, or hear his match reviews and constructive insight on how the modern product could be improved using lessons from the territory days.  These newer fans just want to hear yet another version of the "Dairy Queen video." We all know how Cornette will react to this stuff, there's no surprise there. 

There has been a noticeable decline in the quality of Cornette's Drive-Thru since he started to grow in popularity and gain new listeners after his infamous review of AEW's Double or Nothing last year.  There used to be some really interesting questions about historical stuff or Cornette's time in the territories.  Now it's stupid crap like "what would you think of Orange Cassidy as AEW Champion?"  or questions about who should be in the WWE Hall of Fame.  And a lot of that is on Brian Last.  But both he and Cornette obviously know what helped these shows gain in popularity, and they are playing to that crowd...not the old school fans who used to be his fanbase.

[FMKK]

Last is a hack imo. Cornette could easily do a good show where he talks about old school stuff and also gives a decent assessment of AEW looking at the positives and negatives but it's all squarely focused on the histrionics. 

Incidentally, Cornette sometimes has good points to make about AEW but he does everything in such an abrasive way that comparing people to Cornette has become the 'ok boomer' of online wrestling discourse. So while saying he wants Orange Cassidy to break his neck and die may get him the clicks, the whole form has gone to discredit any sort of critique that current wrestling could stand to learn from old school thinking.

[BruiserBrody]

On the Last topic, he gets sent the questions for the drive thru and seems to go through them ahead of time....and yet almost every week without fail we get "This is a terribly written question..."  Either edit it beforehand or bypass it then!